This morning was a “double scoop of vanilla ice cream in my bowl of coffee” type of morning.

It’s Memorial Day weekend, it’s gorgeous out, and all five of my daughters are sleeping in late. The pool, which I originally did not plan on opening, is indeed being opened this weekend despite our upcoming move – much to the girls’ delight.

And, to mix things up a bit out there, I decided to buy the girls an “icicle tent” to set up as a “clubhouse”.

What I am NOT a lover of, is coming home and discovering a white floor covering in my 6 and 8 year old daughters bedroom. Especially when this white floor covering is actually an eight foot by five foot, white alpaca fur rug. Did I mention it’s white?

“Daddy got it for us,” my six year reported excitedly as she sprawled out on it, petting it, nuzzling the long fur. “He said he saw it and just knew we had to have it!”

During storms I like to light candles. And turn off all the lights. And enjoy feeling the raw power of Mother Nature envelope me – filling my senses.

My five girls sit by the windows, watching and waiting. Watching the raindrops plunge heavily downward, using the grass and flowers and little red wagon as trampolines. Waiting for my “OK” (for the lightning and thunder to pass) to run outside – barefoot, of course – and cover each other with globs of mud and then rinse that mud off in the torrential downpour.

There is an old man who lives in the wide expanse of woods behind my house. He committed a hideous crime – it was so bad, I can’t even describe it – and was sent to prison. Life sentences – nine of them. He was a very clever, very shrewd man, and in 1999, the year my oldest daughter was born, through careful planning, he escaped, and ran into the woods behind our house where he has lived ever since. There’s even a lean-to that you can see if you go deep, deep into the brush.

Anyway, that’s the story I made up to tell my girls every time we wander through the beautiful, lush woods…

Like this:

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” ~Elizabeth Stone

First of All…HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!! Warm hugs and kisses to all you ladies whose hearts live outside your bodies…

Second of all, this post will be a shorter than others, only because, not only did I get my wish for a LONG, uninterrupted HOT shower (thank you girls for playing nicely during it)…I am about to get a massage. And although I have never tried it, I suspect writing while getting one would be rather tough…

I am NOT very pleased with the person who taught my youngest to jimmy locked doors.

I am particularly perturbed at that person when I’m in the shower and I never hear the door open – just the whoosh of my pink-on-pink shower curtain before the icy breeze grabs at my exposed body parts (for some reason, I can never remember to turn on the heating lamps).

“Whatcha doin’, Mommy? Can you make me some more chocolate milk?” My three year old’s big blue eyes blink as if she thinks I really am doing nothing.

I am NOT very pleased with the person who taught my youngest to jimmy locked doors.

I am particularly perturbed at that person when I’m in the shower and I never hear the door open – just the whoosh of my pink-on-pink shower curtain before the icy breeze grabs at my exposed body parts (for some reason, I can never remember to turn on the heating lamps).

“Whatcha doin’, Mommy? Can you make me some more chocolate milk?” My three year old’s big blue eyes blink as if she thinks I really am doing nothing.

In the scorching heat of the European summer afternoons, after the rain sprinkles it’s last luminous drops of refreshing water, the young people in Poland (at least in the mountain village my mother’s family lives in), grab their baskets and quickly make their way into the woods. To “gather mushrooms”.

At least that’s what they tell their parents…

I can still remember the first time I went “mushroom gathering”. My cousin and I were cooped up playing poker in the bright yellow kitchen (I was losing miserably), and she kept pulling aside the delicate white lace curtains and sighing at the rain. All of a sudden, she grabbed my wrist and yanked me up…

In the scorching heat of the European summer afternoons, after the rain sprinkles it’s last luminous drops of refreshing water, the young people in Poland (at least in the mountain village my mother’s family lives in), grab their baskets and quickly make their way into the woods. To “gather mushrooms”.